PIECES OF ADVICE...

...when you are planning/already own a Mac:

1) 80GB is an ultimately small amount. Which is why laptops or system units the company (Apple) sells have this capacity as the lowest in their hard drives. (Talagang 69GB... because of my Windows installation)

2) ALWAYS reserve 20GB of free space. You'll never know when you'll install some HUGE software like Final Cut Studio (though it honestly takes up 40GB and takes four hours reportedly, to install).

3) NEVER use Automator if you don't know what the hell it does.

4) NEVER use iMovie and iDVD at the same time. YOUR COMPUTER WILL SURELY HANG.

5) You won't find any guide for the alien language OS X uses for the hotkeys/keyboard commands. No really, I still don't know them yet. But the big up directional symbol is Shift.

6) Insert that Mac OSX Install Disc, and look for X11. Just search for it instead in Spotlight because I don't remember. X11 will surely come in handy after you install it.

7) ALWAYS log out of your password-protected user (assuming it is password-protected) if you have reckless, galawgaw siblings. Because once you close the Apple lappie or system unit, the user that will be opened is your own user. So that means there is no user log-in screen during boot. Nada.

8) Stop looking for the Control Panel. It's called System Preferences now. Get used to it.

9) There's NO Add/Remove Programs in the aforementioned System Preferences. So if you've installed some programs, always do as the dialog says: Drag the icon to the Applications folder. Seriously. (Although if the program you've installed is out of sight, you can always search for it.) Removal of the program involves dragging the icon to the trash. Done.

10) DO NOT go on Video Podcast overload. THEY WILL FILL UP ANY iTUNES ENABLED COMPUTER... to the rim! (I'm having a free space crisis already! I've got an 80GB disk pa naman)

11) Download VLC Media Player first, because Apple is maarte with original, region-coded DVDs. VLC bypasses this. Or better yet, buy pirated DVDs.

12) Never abuse the processor of a Mac. Dual-core nga, pero napapagod din!

13) Do not expect too much out of a MacBook's video card. It SUCKS.

14) Always look for the word Open-Platform when you download stuff. It's not everyday that the perfect software is in Mac (because they're in Windows).

15) Do not underestimate iMovie '06 and never upgrade to iMovie '08. (My trailer can testify.)

16) iDVD has a bit of a learning curve.

17) Always go to iPhoto for slideshow needs. (I got 437 photos in a slideshow in 5 minutes. No joke.)

18) Never mistaken the iCal (for Tiger) icon for today's date. It'll always be JUL 17 no matter what.

19) If you see a colorful twirly mouse cursor, that means only one program has hanged. Close it by clicking the blue Apple button in the menu bar (only after you press F11 that is) and click Force Quit, Mac's simpler equivalent to Task Manager. Force Quit the hanging program and it'll ALWAYS go away.

20) Do not always think that Save As... equates to giving you the power to save one thing to other formats. Export does that.